And Here We Are
by Rukia Siry
Summary: It's your seventeenth birthday, and you're going to be a trainer. You didn't quite know what you were getting into, but whatever. You'll figure this out. Pokemon genfic, told from an outside perspective.


**Warning: Heavy spoilers for Pokemon Diamond/Pearl.**

* * *

It's your seventeenth birthday, and you're going to be a trainer.

You're really late, you know. Most kids get their starter at age thirteen, but your parents wanted you to graduate university and find a job more stable than winning battles for profit.

You disagreed. But you never knew much about training before you decided you wanted to do it, and so here you are.

A tiny part of you is relieved when the Professor doesn't blink twice at your age when you timidly enter the Ito Ishioka Lab. His assistant lets you in.

"Oh, I'm just a family friend," she corrects when you ask. Her smile is so big you wonder if you should be blinded. "Everyone calls me Honey Lemon! It's _so_ good to see you, we were afraid you wouldn't make it!"

You just stare a little dumbly up at her and wonder why someone so insanely tall still chooses to wear platform heels.

The Professor himself greets you with a big smile. He's young, you think. He could be a regular undergrad at the local university, or maybe even the handsome TA a few grades above you.

The tag on his coat reads TADASHI HAMADA, but he introduces himself as simply Professor Hamada.

"I've been expecting you! Here to get your first pokemon?"

You mumble a quiet affirmative, and he wheels up that familiar cart you've seen on all the T.V. shows and trainer documentaries. It's chrome gray and has three scoops in the flat metal top, each holding a single red and white pokeball.

"It's important to pick a partner that you feel a genuine bond with," he tells you. "That friendship will help you both achieve your potential as trainer and pokemon."

You take his advice to heart, and look down at your three choices.

Turtwig, the Tiny Leaf Pokemon, naps inside the ball to the far right. It looks rather dopey, if you're being honest. You wonder how such a weed could evolve into the mighty Torterra.

There's Piplup, the Penguin Pokemon, on the left. It is very much awake, and aims a haughty look up at you from the transparent confines of its ball before pointedly turning around. It doesn't seem to like you very much.

Chimchar, the Chimp Pokemon, is in the middle. This one is wild and rambunctious, almost bouncing off the sides of its ball. It pays little attention to you, but looks like it's having loads of fun. You're almost jealous.

But you've made your decision even before you came here. "Turtwig," you say, squaring your shoulders. Professor Hamada laughs, and Honey Lemon squeals. "Excellent choice. My little bro might have some trouble with that one…"

"Your younger brother?" you ask curiously. Honey Lemon giggles. The Professor turns around with a glint in his eye, and you get the feeling that you may have unlocked some hefty floodgates.

You learn a whole lot more about Hiro, the Professor's adorkable, genius, thoroughly exasperating younger brother, as the Professor fetches you pokeballs and the trainer starter pack. In fact, you learn quite a bit more than you wanted to, like how he designed rocket-boots for his aunt's Purugly when he was eight and hacked the PA system of his high school to play dirty jokes every time the bigoted principal tried to speak through it at the tender age of ten.

You sort of doubt the authenticity of some of these tales, but Professor Hamada's enthusiasm is too strong to ignore.

"If you see him on your journey, tell him I said hi!" The Professor says cheerily. He turns from his workstation, and this is the moment you've been waiting for: the Pokedex, life's work of the late Robert Callaghan. You almost snatch it from the Professor's hands, turning it over and marveling at how such a small device can store the sum of Pokemon research.

Robert Callaghan really _was_ a genius.

"Yes," Professor Hamada says. "Yes, he was." He sounds a little sad, and you wonder if the Professor knew him. It's possible; he only died a year or so ago, after all.

"A family friend," Professor Hamada replies. He doesn't say any more than that, and you don't push the topic.

Then the Professor hands you a region map, and the topic of conversation changes to directions to the nearest city. He points out tourist hotspots and regional landmarks. He highlights Pokemon Centers and smaller towns along the way to your destination.

Honey Lemon interrupts periodically to label cheap shopping centers and science museums on the map, and you thank her even though you don't think you'll be dropping by them anytime soon.

You're about to leave when Professor Hamada stops you. "Nearly forgot. When you reach a gym city, make sure to drop me a message. It's always great to hear what's going on with new trainers."

By the time you set off on your own down the simple dirt road, you feel completely on top of things. You're more than ready to become a Pokemon Trainer.

\- (•—•)-

"H-Hey. Can I challenge you to a battle?"

This newest trainer looks like a schoolboy, barely fourteen, with messy black hair and wide eyes. He pulls a single basic pokeball out of the backpack on his shoulder and fumbles it when he goes to press the button. It falls to the ground, releasing a tiny spherical automaton that levitates around his head with a metallic _hum_.

You're confident. You just got to Oreburgh, and Roark was a pushover against your newly evolved Grotle and Hoothoot.

"'Course you can," you say, tilting your head back arrogantly. He nods back with starry eyes and calls his Magnemite into battle with a loud, "Go, Megabot!"

What a silly name, you think privately.

The battle is over in two moves. Megabot's weak electric strikes have no effect on a ground-type like Grotle, and a few well-aimed tackles send Megabot reeling back into the arms of his trainer in a dead faint.

The boy returns his Magnemite with a disappointed sigh. "Aw, that was my first battle! Can I go again?" He laughs off your annoyance and holds out his money, eyes sparkling with mischief. "Just kidding. Tell you what: when I get stronger, I'll fight you one more time!"

He disappears into the woods, and you wonder why he's heading that way when Oreburgh is in the opposite direction. You don't dwell on it, though. Eterna City lies across miles of dense forest, and you and your Pokemon need an awful lot of preparation before you venture out into _that_ unknown.

\- (•—•)-

"Congratulations on your win!"

You thank him bashfully. Professor Hamada just smiles warmly back at you from the computer screen. You've just beaten Gardenia with quite a bit more trouble than you had with Roark, but Noctowl handled it admirably.

The bird-type pecks affectionately at your hair as you update Professor Hamada, and you push her away so she doesn't wind up giving you an unwanted haircut.

You only briefly mention the kid that you encountered near Oreburgh, but you oblige when Professor Hamada asks you to describe the boy further. He leans forward, interest renewed. "So you met Hiro?"

"That was your brother?" you ask in surprise. You can see the family resemblance, but…

"And you beat him!" Professor Hamada laughs wryly. "I guess he doesn't seem so great to you, huh?"

You're too embarrassed to answer properly, but he doesn't seem to take offense from the response. "He's still just a kid, after all. Never mind. I'll always be proud of him."

"You care about him an awful lot," you comment. The Professor rubs the back of his head awkwardly.

"Comes with the territory. He's a handful, but we've only had each other for a pretty long time - ever since we were young."

There's something about his wistful expression that seems a tad vulnerable, and you backtrack quickly. There's something else that you want to discuss, and that's the theft in Jubilife City you successfully stopped.

"What were they trying to steal?" the professor queries. You shrug a shoulder. "Some machine from Krei Tech Corporation. They never mentioned what it actually was…" You tell him more, about the man's mutterings and extremely _unusual_ fashion sense. You've never been one for fashion, but full-body jumpsuits seem a little overdoing it.

Professor Hamada looks thoughtful. "I'll put a friend of mine on the case. Keep an eye out, hm? I have a feeling this isn't the only shady character you'll see around..."

\- (•—•)-

Floaroma Town technically should have been on the way to Eterna City, but somewhere in between running from a cloud of angry Combee and getting lost for two weeks, you completely missed it.

So you brave the Eterna Forest again, and this time, you find the quaint flower-blanketed town exactly where it's supposed to be.

Of course you take pictures next to the flower meadows and honey trees, but you're really looking for the iconic green energy plant to the east. The Valley Windworks is a minor landmark, but your mom asked you to get pictures, so here you are.

It takes you an hour to find it, and you get a glimpse of weird suits and a Pokemon patrol before a hand reaches up and yanks you behind a bush.

"Quiet!" the strange man hisses at you. "Do you want them to find us?"

You stare, for a moment. He has skin the color of cocoa and dreads that have somehow been braided and combed into order. He's also offering you a hand and smile as if he didn't just drag you off like a stereotypical kidnapper.

The little girl sitting next to him doesn't help the image.

She doesn't seem like a prisoner, though. The girl wiggles over to tug at your arm. She leans close in a conspiratorial sort of way. "His name's Wasabi. Like the plant!"

Wasabi - he says it's a nickname - is undercover. Running reconnaissance. Seeing as he's picking individual twigs and leaves from your hair as he speaks, you find it hard to believe him.

That's before a Gallade appears in a crouch two feet away and then psychically muffles you as you open your mouth to scream.

You subside in mild mortification as Wasabi whips out a cloth to buff a smudge from his Gallade's blade arm. He receives a light smack with its flat side for his trouble.

"Ow," Wasabi mumbles. "What did you find?"

The man cocks his head, as if listening to a silent voice. Then, he nods. "No higher-ups, but there's a lot of Galactic scumbags in there," he tells you. "I could use a hand."

A group of unidentified individuals have taken over the plant and are holding the researchers inside hostage. One of them is the little girl's father. You immediately volunteer your assistance.

The problem is that it's a laboratory as well as a plant, meaning that it's built of materials that resist psychic interference and guarded by a near legion of psychic and dark types. Corporate espionage and all that. You break in the old-fashioned way and sneak up.

Somewhere on the third floor, there's a metal door that's better guarded than anything you've seen so far. Gallade takes out the Rhydon with astonishing ease. Wasabi knocks out the accompanying grunt with a karate chop to the temple, catching him before he can thump against the ground.

"Cover me," Wasabi whispers, and activates wrist lasers that burn straight through the metal door.

Inside, you glimpse men and women you assume are the captive scientists, but there are also Galactic trainers and those need to be taken care of first.

You free the plant workers. Wasabi disappears to hunt through the higher floors for information, or so he tells you. You're finishing up with the stragglers on ground level when Noctowl screams.

A Purugly springs through an open doorway, pinning your flyer firmly to the ground. You spin around and recall her as quickly as you can, voice pitched in shock.

"I step out for half an hour and _this_ is what I come back to?" The voice is heavy with distaste and belongs to a woman with flaming red hair. She throws a languid glance at you, standing frozen off to the side. "Oh, look. A little rat."

You find your voice enough to order Grotle to Razor Leaf her, and the battle begins.

It's hard. The Purugly is a menace of whirling claws and deadly snarls. Your newly-caught Pachirisu falls to a Water Pulse you didn't know Puruglies could learn. Grotle takes it down, but he's weary from fighting all of the other trainers, and you don't think he can last much longer.

Good news: you've pissed off the woman you're battling. Bad news: she still has five more pokeballs clipped to her belt.

"What do you think you're doing to my pokemon… you uppity little brat!" she snarls. She enlarges a second pokeball, but freezes almost comically, staring at something just past your shoulder.

It's the oldest trick in the book. You turn anyways, because Mars looks like she's about to have a stroke.

It's Wasabi, who stumbles out of a hallway and sags against the doorjamb, puffing like he's just run a mile. His Gallade is not far behind, but appears to be in far better shape than his trainer.

"Six… flights… where in the world is the elevator?" he wheezes.

"What are _you_ doing here?" Mars nearly screeches back. She backs up a step, but draws herself back up in a semblance of dignity. "I suppose our little operation here is over. That's all right, though. We've drawn enough energy for the time being."

A Crobat seizes her shoulders and airlifts her from the building. In seconds, she's a speck in the clouds, and her shouted words echo back down to you.

"Team Galactic is rising. And there's not a thing you can do to stop it!"

\- (•—•)-

This new organization is worrying, to be sure. But you're a trainer, and when you're cut off from civilization for weeks at a time, these problems seem so far away.

It's been months since you started, and there hasn't been much criminal activity at all. You've won your sixth badge from Byron, though it took you three tries to get past that Bronzong. Floatzel and Ponyta have joined Torterra, Noctowl and Pachirisu at your side. Watching your Pokemon play brings a goofy grin to your face, and sometimes you can't even recall what your life was like before you had your team to fall back on.

It's when you return to Veilstone to restock on supplies that you meet a familiar face.

The infamous Game Corner of Veilstone, and the messy-haired kid you bump into on your way in grins at you like you're long lost friends.

"It's been a while! I've gotten way stronger. How about a rematch?"

Hiro has a Magneton this time around. It's still not a match for your Rapidash. You beat him in a matter of minutes. He hands over his money with a resigned air.

"You're way too good. Wasabi wasn't lying, huh?"

"You know Wasabi?" you question. You haven't seen him ever since the Windworks incident, when he told you to keep an eye out and disappeared shortly after with his Gallade.

"Family friend," he grins. "He wanted to thank you for helping at Floaroma. Give me your Pokenav, would you?"

He plugs in a tiny hard drive for a few seconds. When he hands it back, it's got apps you didn't know were available to the average consumer.

Wasabi's got connections. So does Hiro, apparently.

"If you're going to Snowpoint, you'll need more than that to make it through Mt. Coronet," he tells you. "Drop Tadashi a line. He'll help."

He's gone before you can stutter out a thank you, and it's only later you wonder what he was doing in such a shady part of town.

When the newsreel plays footage of a reported burglary at the Veilstone Building, you don't pay it any mind.

\- (•—•)-

This guy is scruffy and unkempt and kind of gross. He can't possibly be the dude you're looking for.

You don't want to disturb him, but you saw a NO LOITERING sign outside the Celestic Ruins. He's also drooling on one of its famed wall carvings and you're pretty sure that's a flouting of the Sinnoh Conservation Act or something.

You wish you'd asked for a better description. The kindly grandmother at the Center hadn't said anything beyond _"Oh, my grandson will be around the ruins this time of day. He didn't want me to come by, but you look like a strong lad. Would you take him his lunch for me?"_

His lunch, by the way, is a thermos that looks like it was sized more for a draft horse than a person.

You surreptitiously glance around. You two are still the only ones there.

He sort of looks like a Fred, at least.

You wonder if you should poke him awake. It seems rude.

You're inordinately relieved when his eyes flicker at your approach, and he rouses himself with a loud yawn and rattling groan.

"Hi," you return cautiously. The man's eyes flick over to you, and he immediately clears his throat. He dusts his slightly stained red shirt off, stretches, and slowly, majestically, rises to his feet like he hasn't just been snoring (and drooling) up a hurricane.

"Greetings, visitor," he utters, sweeping his hand through the air. "I've been expecting you."

"… Your name's not Fred, by any chance?"

"Ooh, we've met?"

You hold out the canister of soup. "We haven't. Your… grandma asked me to take this to you?"

"Sweet!" He grabs it and, in a flurry of unholy noises and absolutely abhorrent etiquette, scarfs it down. You're still staring as he wipes his mouth with his sleeve and hands you the empty thermos approximately thirty seconds later.

"Man, that hit the spot. Nothing beats Gram's cooking. Thanks, dude!" He slaps you on the back. You sidle away, wondering what breed of monster this man is.

"… Nice to meet you," you offer. Fred nods impressively and, for whatever reason, switches to the most overdone medieval façade you've ever heard.

"Come to gaze upon the great ruins of the Sinnohan shrines of old?"

"I wouldn't really put it like that…" you start, but he jumps on the hesitation.

"Well, you've come to the right guy. I'll show you the ropes!"

"I'm not looking for a tour guide."

Fred holds up a finger, the other hand clasped behind his back. "But this is no simple tour. The reasons are twofold: first, deep secrets lay entombed within these hallowed halls - secrets that _some_ say," he leans in conspiratorially, "contain the powers manifest to remake the known world."

"No one actually -"

"Ah-ah. So they say." There's a manic glint in his eye. You get the feeling he's a lot more into this than he's letting on.

"Come on, come on! I'll show you!"

He promptly drags you past the wall carvings, past the paintings, over the roped-off side door that has a big NO ENTRY hung above it (this is the point where you try to jerk your arm away, but he's not having it) and into a part of the ruins that you've never seen before, an open space with a sizeable cavern in the center.

There's someone else there.

He's middle-aged, with spiked silver-blue hair and shadowed eyes. It's the strange man you saw in Mt. Coronet, what seems like a lifetime ago.

"Oh, hey," Fred says. "Dunno if you saw the sign," he points helpfully somewhere back the way you came, "But this area's _off limits_."

Fred doesn't get to say that.

The man's gaze passes over the both of you with something like disgust. He doesn't respond. At least, not with something that makes sense.

"Nosepass, Brick Break."

You barely get a moment to think _Oh, crap_ before the pokemon floating beside him jets at you, hand raised and glowing with crackling energy -

A winged arm intercepts it, and the Garchomp flings the Nosepass across the room, already in a defensive stance in front of them.

You both backpedal frantically. Rapidash and Torterra are out in a second, and you curse yourself for leaving your other pokemon at the Center. More pokemon are entering the scene - Magnezones and Probopasses that form a menacing line between you and the intruder.

Rocks are flying and pokemon screaming and Fred's talking. "Oh, nooo. Gar, don't let him -"

The back wall of the room erupts into rubble, and the man steps over the scattered rock and into the chamber that lies beyond.

"Well, this is a mess," Fred declares. He ducks flying shrapnel before turning to you. "You look like a pretty great trainer, and I'm not really supposed to let ol' Cyrus see what's in there. How 'bout a teamup?"

It's not the worst idea you've ever heard.

\- (•—•)-

Maybe Cyrus got away, but at least now you know what you're up against. You've been chasing shadows in the dark for way, way too long. First the theft in Jubilife, then your encounter in Mt. Coronet, _then_ the Valley Windworks, and now the Celestic Town bombing. You're tired of being out of the loop.

Fortunately, it looks like this new arrival might fix that.

Fred's eyes light up. "Hiro! My man!"

"You know each other," you deadpan.

"Friend of the fam!" Fred crows, throwing one arm around Hiro's shoulder. Hiro lets him, with the sort of amusement that makes you think he gets this treatment fairly often.

"Is that a euphemism for something?" you ask, because an inside joke gets old when every quirky stranger you meet uses it.

"Nah, it's the truth," Fred dismisses.

That doesn't really answer your question.

You get plenty of other ones answered, though, so you don't complain. Overmuch.

The pokemon of Sinnoh legends and fairytale - they're _real_ , and they're in danger. No one knows Team Galactic's ultimate goal, but they know that they're hunting for legendaries. Dialga and Palkia, the titans of time and space. Azelf and Uxie and Mesprit, the Lake Guardians. That kind of power can destroy Sinnoh.

That kind of power could wreck the world.

"Storm's coming," Fred says without a trace of his previous enthusiasm. "You better be ready when it hits."

You've got a lot to think about, and as it turns out, not much time to do anything at all.

It's a week after Candice hands you your seventh badge that all hell breaks loose.

\- (•—•)-

You've worked hard, trained hard. But badge progress and team power notwithstanding, there's not much time to bask in self-accomplishment.

You hardly know Hiro, so it takes you a second to place the boy that shows up in the middle of breakfast and drags you over to the television playing in the lobby.

"Turn it to channel ten!" he shouts at the surprised Nurse Joy. When she does, the entire Center falls silent.

It's Lake Verity, and a woman with flaming red hair threatens to set off a bomb.

The moment when everyone panics is also the moment when the doors of the Pokemon Center _swish_ open, and a squad of Galactic soldiers rush in, flanked front and back by hostile pokemon.

A lot of trainers have pokemon recuperating in the center, or locked inside their pokeballs.

A lot of trainers have their own pokemon out, though, and fights rapidly break out all over the center. It's chaos. Hiro pulls you through it, his Magneton grimly orbiting you both.

"We have to get out!" he yells in your face, pulling harder when you try to help nearby trainers. You think of the bomb and the legendary pokemon you've heard so much about and Cyrus's plans, and you follow him.

Outside, there's a girl astride the biggest Salamence you've ever seen. Hiro pulls you on, and in seconds, the three of you are hundreds of feet above the ground.

"Fred's?" Hiro says, one eyebrow raised. The girl snorts. "Swapped him for Dragonite. Didn't you need a bigger ride?"

The girl introduces herself as Gogo. She doesn't give a surname, and offers a curt, "Family friend," when you ask her how she knows Hiro.

You kind of expect that response by now, but it's still annoying.

The kid fills in the awkward silence with a terse explanation of exactly what's going on.

Team Galactic had deeper roots than anyone expected, and they've staged uprisings in every major city in Sinnoh. The police stations and emergency services are under attack; the Gym Leaders have their hands full. It's up to you and your new allies to stop the Galactics at the three lakes now, before the bomb goes off.

The problem is that there's only one bomb, and no one knows which lake is going to blow.

"We're splitting up," Gogo says. "You're on Lake Valor. Honey's sorting out Verity. Baymax can get Hamada up north, so they're on duty."

You wonder which Hamada she's referring to, and who Baymax is.

Wasabi and Fred are indisposed, managing the Galactic outbreaks in the cities. Gogo says she's going to go help.

Hiro's tagging along with you, though. You've got concerns.

"… You ready for this?" you ask him. You're different. You turned eighteen last week. You have seven badges - you'd have eight if the Sunyshore leader ever bothered to man his gym - and a full team that you'd trust with your life.

Hiro only has his Magneton, and he doesn't look older than fourteen.

Gogo snorts like she's muffling a laugh. Hiro just grins.

"Don't worry about me," he says. "I've got some tricks up my sleeve."

You failed.

When you landed near Lake Valor, Hiro sent you ahead while he held off the grunts. Maybe you underestimated him, because his Magneton disabled the grunts surrounding you with hardly any effort at all.

Or maybe you've underestimated your own strength. Sometimes you forget that you aren't a pushover, either.

Either way, you weren't strong enough to subdue Mars before the bomb went off. You only remember Floatzel freezing the Purugly to the soil beneath and towing you towards cover, Torterra shielding you all with his own shell and a shimmering Protect.  
But Protect only does so much against a warhead.

There's an odd popping noise, a sudden pain inside your ear, and the world turns white.

You wake up in an unfamiliar place.

The room you're in is lightly furnished and dark, curtains drawn to block out sunlight. It's early evening. You could have sworn it was late morning just a minute ago…

There's a T.V. set to low volume and brightness blaring white noise in the corner. You squint at the screen for a second - it's news coverage of a siege in Hearthome at the Contest Hall. Police surround it, exchanging gunfire with the Galactics inside. Their pokemon form the perimeter around them, fending off attacks from pokemon on the other side.

You almost mistake the yellow-red blur that rounds the side of the hall as a pokemon, but it's a person on skates, drawing fire long enough for the police squadrons to cross the buffer zone in between.

The news cuts to scenes going on in other cities, though for the most part they seem to have settled down. There's a blue and orange pokemon that looks like a cross between an Omastar and a Feraligatr, a man in green coordinating relief efforts -

You reach for the remote, sitting on the nightstand next to you, and tiredly shut it off.

The sudden absence of noise wakes someone else up; on the couch across the room, Professor Hamada groans and jerks upright from where he's slumped across the sofa. He runs a hand across his chin, and then notices you're awake.

The side of his mouth quirks up. "Welcome back."

A cup of coffee and continental breakfast later, you understand everything.

You've been out for six hours. The lake spirits Azelf and Uxie and Mesprit were captured at all three lakes and used to forge the last key to realizing Cyrus's dream.

Spear Pillar, the shrine to the old legendaries atop Mt. Coronet. That's where Cyrus will summon Dialga and Palkia with the power of the Red Chain, and create his new world.

"... So why aren't you there right now?"

He grins sheepishly and tugs his collar to the side. Bandages swathe his shoulder. "They benched me. A Toxic got me at Acuity. I wasn't paying enough attention."

Either way, Professor Hamada is needed here. Whatever's going down on Mt. Coronet, it's wreaking havoc on the environment for hundreds of miles around. He's working with the other researchers to try and contain the fallout.

You're still not ready for this.

You _lost_. You failed your pokemon. You failed the Lake Trio, and you failed Sinnoh when you couldn't stop the bomb from going off.

Your faith in yourself has shattered with it, and you wonder if any of it even matters.

You can't quite meet Professor Hamada's eyes when you tell him that maybe it's better if you sit this one out.

He doesn't give you a pep talk. He doesn't frown, or tell you to woman up and take it. In fact, he doesn't say anything at first. Maybe that's worse.

But then, he slides a tray of six pokeballs onto the table. Your team, you realize dazedly. "I think you're worth more than you think," Professor Hamada says.

He smiles. "Think about it."

You sit there for a long time after he's gotten up and left. Thinking. Always thinking.

He left the tray there. You pick up your pokeballs, scrutinizing them like they hold all the answers. Their surfaces flash transparent when they hit the light, and every one of your pokemon stands at attention, eyes focused through the warped glass. "Sorry," you murmur. "I let you down."

Maybe you lost the battle, but the war is in full swing. Maybe you're too late, but maybe there's still everything you can do to stop it.

"Can I rely on you guys one more time?"

Spear Pillar.

One last try.

\- (•—•)-

It's over. You can hardly believe it.

You stopped Cyrus and Team Galactic. You calmed the legendaries and sent them back to… wherever they came from. There are still pockets of resistance all over Sinnoh, but they're being taken care of by Gym Leaders and trainers and the secretive Elite Four.

It's out of your hands now. You're fine with that; you did your time. You deserve to rest.

But there's a question you've wanted to get out, and it's gnawed at you for quite a while. So you ask.

"Why me?"

Hiro looks up. The Pokemon Center is quiet and empty despite the afternoon hour, and you've mostly been sitting in comfortable silence for the past half hour. Maybe you were both just too tired to say anything. Maybe no words needed to be said.

"Hm?"

You gesture abstractedly in the air. "There are a lot of trainers. Why ask me to help with all of this? Why get me involved?"

Hiro shrugs a shoulder. "My brother."

He elaborates when he sees your confused expression. "Tadashi recommended you. Said you were his go-to."

You're not sure quite what to think of that.

The boy pauses, as if considering his next words. They ring with an odd sincerity that you're not quite accustomed to. "He was right, you know. We couldn't have done it without you. So, thanks. I got you something, too."

He shoves a case into your arms that's heavier than it looks. When you open it, a shiny steel disk, like a CD, gleams up at you.

The thing is compact and tinged metallic blue, and your eyes widen to dinner plates as you inspect it.

"It's called Fly," Hiro says. "Your Noctowl will like it."

"How did…" you breathe. HMs are incredibly rare and exorbitantly expensive. Maybe not Defog so much, but Fly gives tiny pokemon like Emolga and Hoppip the strength to lift incredible weights at frankly ridiculous speeds.

Like people.

Hiro grins wickedly at you. "Made it myself!" he chirps, and scampers off before you can decide whether he's joking or not.

There's a note inside, too. It reads something like:

 _Thanks for all the help. Hope to see you soon. - Professor Hamada_

You wonder what that means. The only place you're going, after all, is the final gym.

\- (•—•)-

You've been by Sunyshore before, looking to challenge the eighth leader. Instead, you got turned away at the door by a CLOSED sign and an apologetic Nurse Joy, who informed you that the gym leader was away on official business.

The doors are open now, and you fancy yourself a gym-navigating veteran. You've skidded across slippery ice floors to reach Candice and crossed lifts and pulleys to challenge Byron. But the riddles and pop quiz questions that you encounter here have you pulling your hair out.

Wi-fi doesn't work inside the gym. Go figure.

You're not expecting the person sitting cross-legged in the final room.

"Surprise!" Professor Hamada says, looking rather pleased at the thunderstruck look on your face.

Professor Tadashi Hamada is the eighth gym leader, and he's looking for a challenge.

It's, without a doubt, one of the hardest battles you've fought up to this point.

Floatzel barely manages to take out the Professor's Arcanine, which shakes off Water Pulses like they're sprinklers, until one of them makes it dizzy. His Togekiss finishes off your Floatzel and wages a fierce airfight with Noctowl. The Professor's Gardevoir and Chandelure aren't pushovers, either.

Then:

"Baymax, you're up!"

A shiny Blissey materializes on the field, and you pause for a moment to admire it. It's not like any other you've seen, and you've seen a lot of them at Pokemon Centers the region over. It's chalky white instead of pink, for one, and a black line bridges the gap between its two dark eyes.

It looks dopey and harmless, if you're being honest.

You know better than to assume that.

"Last pokemon," he says with a tight smile. "Let's see how you do. Baymax, Brick Break!"

The Blissey knocks your starter through the wall.

The rest of the fight is an all-stops-out struggle against his frankly ridiculous tank of a healer, which mows through all the Flamethrowers your Rapidash can throw and seems only dazed by Pachirisu's Thunderbolts.

When Baymax finally goes down, Torterra is only seconds behind it.

He holds out your gym badge - a white oval with two linked black dots that bears a startling resemblance to his Blissey's markings - and the obligatory TM. It's Heal Pulse.

"You've gotten a lot stronger. I think you deserve the Spirit Badge."

You return his smile, and he walks you back through the rooms to the front door, babbling about random things - his talks with Hiro, rebuilding efforts in Sunyshore. Then, your curious prodding turns it to his short-lived training career, and its revival some years into his professorship.

At the door, he mentions conversationally, "You can likely guess this already, but I wasn't always the gym leader here. I actually took over for my brother Hiro when he decided he wanted to travel more."

He gets a laugh out of the incredulous look on your face. "Don't believe me? Ha! Maybe if you go on to the Elite Four, you'll finally see how amazing my little bro is."

\- (•—•)-

The first Elite Four member is a girl in shockingly pink armor. She's Chemkit, you remember, from the T.V. showings of the Galactic city uprisings.

Then she takes off her helmet, and you choke on your own spit.

"Hi!" Honey Lemon waves at you. "We've been waiting for you for _so long -_ thought you weren't going to make it!"

You're too busy choking on your own spit to answer.

You beat her easily enough, but you've traversed the Victory Road and trained for months before challenging the Elite Four. Tadashi's near win psyched you out more than you thought it would.

Her Altaria and Lopunny present challenges. Still, Honey isn't as difficult an opponent as Tadashi was, or maybe you've just grown stronger. She's unexpectedly buoyant over her loss and engages you in light conversation while you heal up your pokemon.

"Good luck!" she squeals, giving you one last hug before shoving you into the next passageway.

You don't think your heart can take any more surprises. Unfortunately, the world seems to disagree.

\- (•—•)-

Knifehand waits in the next room, sporting a blue visor and forest-green armor.

He lifts his shades and grins tentatively at you. It's Wasabi.

Wasabi offers you a clean paper bag to hyperventilate into, apologizes for all the trouble ("Fred's the one who suggested the theatrics, remind me to laser-hand him in the face someday.") and tells you that this whole _superhero_ thing is really pretty overrated.

Wasabi makes for a harder opponent. You get through it.

"It was a pain hiding it for so long," he tells you. "Helping others is all well and good, but it's nice that you know now. Not enough people do."

He looks you up and down, and adds with a grin, "You wouldn't make a bad Champion, you know."

\- (•—•)-

You're not even surprised when you reach the third room. Fredzilla swaggers forward, throwing back the hood of his monster suit to reveal a ragged green beanie and a very familiar face.

"The secret identities of the unsung heroes have been revealed!" Fred intones epically. "Prepare to face the thunder!"

That's the only warning you get before Fred the Feraligatr takes the field and the battle begins.

When it's over, Fred nods stolidly at you. "I have judged you worthy," he announces. "You may pass."

"That's great," you mutter, "but I have to heal my pokemon first."

Fred is too busy staring epically into the distance to respond.

\- (•—•)-

Gogo takes one look at you and sticks the gum she's chewing to the outside of her yellow helmet. Like the others, she's in uniform, and shiny yellow and red armor covers her aerodynamic clothing. She's Speed, and she looks completely at home in her electromag wheels and suit.

"Nice job making it this far, kid."

She waits patiently until you're ready, and doesn't mince words when she calls a Jolteon onto the field.

Gogo is the hardest out of the four - at least Fred's dragons had a highly exploitable weakness to ice. Her Jolteon moves like… well, lightning. Her Dragonite, despite its rather diminutive size, is a force of nature on its own.

Your pokemon don't fail you, though. Flygon takes out her Houndoom with a well-aimed Dragon Pulse; the Serperior falls to your Rapidash's last-ditch Overheat.

You win, barely. Gogo just waves you onward, a tiny smile on her face.

\- (•—•)-

You've had your suspicions, ever since Honey took off her helmet in the first room. They've only crystallized with every too-familiar opponent you've met.

Wasabi. Fred. Gogo.

But it's completely different when _Hiro's_ standing there with an incredibly smug smirk on his face, outfitted in familiar purple-red armor and cradling a reflective helmet under his arm.

All you can think of is the little kid and the Magnemite you beat up for his money.

Tadashi Hamada is the eighth gym leader, and his friends are the Elite Four, and Hiro is champion.

You've been rubbing elbows with superheroes and interregional celebrities this whole time, and you want to kick yourself for never even noticing.

Instead, you see red.

You've run into this kid and his friends time after time on your journey. You've fought together, bled together, and maybe shared a couple of laughs along the way.

And he couldn't be bothered to mention something like this?

(You can't help but wonder whether he's been holding out on you during those Galactic battles. Would fighting Cyrus have been easier with a Champion on your side?)

The battle is a blur of sweat and shouted commands and color, during which his Typhlosion takes out your Noctowl without breaking a sweat and Megabot somehow manages to be in three places at once. It doesn't help that your pokemon are already tired out from their previous matches, or that you're too angry to think straight.

You lose. Badly.

But Hiro looks more delighted than you ever remember him being. He trots over to you as soon as the battle's over, a battered Megabot bobbing by his side.

"I haven't had a fight like that in ages!" he gushes. You raise an eyebrow, not sure if he's joking or not. You did _worse_ than you've done in ages, if you're entirely honest.

"I'm serious. Hey, even Tadashi can't keep up with me. Bit unfair to expect you to."

He sets a hand on your shoulder. You have to stop yourself from shaking it off. "But… I get the feeling that you weren't really giving it your all. That bites, you know?"

It does bite. It bites more than you expect it to. "And how do you know that?"

"Call it champion's intuition?"

"You made that up," you point out flatly.

"If it wasn't a thing, it is now. Anyways. I'll see you when I see you. You'll be back, right?"

You look at his annoying ( _charming_ ) gap-toothed grin, and you think maybe you will be.

* * *

 **A/N:**

 **I personally don't like reader-insert stories at all, so it kind of surprised me when I wrote all this out. Dunno if anyone feels the same. It was supposed to be longer (re: it was supposed to have Honey and Gogo segments because I love them) but it was already dragging on. Inspired by yukipri's Trainer AU on tumblr.**

 **Elite Four (or random pokemon I think they should have):**

 **Wasabi - Gallade, Mienshao, Musharna, Cryogonal, Meganium, Minccino**

 **Honey Lemon - Altaria, Milotic, Lopunny, Castform, Eevee (Sylveon?)**

 **Fred - Garchomp, Rampardos, Tyranitar, Feraligatr, Salamence, Omastar**

 **GoGo - Luxray, Jolteon, Serperior, Houndoom, Dragonite**

 **Headcanon: Gogo probably has the puniest Dragonite of all time. Think aerodynamic racing bike - he's ridiculously fast, but in the meantime…**

 **Tadashi: Lucario, Blissey, Togekiss, Gardevoir**

Omake:

"Dragonite, Hyper Beam!" Fred commands. The five-foot-nothing Dragonite shoots him the most unimpressed look ever. It crosses its paws.

"C'mon, please? For Gogo?"

Its tail sweeps Fred's ankles out from under him. Fred falls on his butt on the pavement, and Dragonite turns to fire a beam of scorching hot energy through a circling helicopter.

"So, is this an eye for an eye sort of thing? I can get behind that."

Gogo's pokemon are about as impressed by Fred as Gogo is. Which is to say… not at all.


End file.
